Is this thread truly trying to assert that Occupy Movement people will not embrace basically as many whole bitcoin as you are willing to hand over to them free for them to use?

I had thought that something as simple as giving them a few million to do with as they choose would have been welcomed by them.

But maybe instead you have been taking much the same tack as the bankers they are protesting: "having a medium of exchange is a privilege not a right, if you want to conduct split-barter transactions you must buy from us a medium in which to conduct the splitting of your barter"...

-MarkM-

So I use my bitcoin credit-card instead of bitcoin, so what, I don't see that invalidating bitcoin or making it "niche", and I expect I have a better chance of actually being able to get a bitcoin credit card than to get a fiat credit card though that would just be an artifact of which credit-rating agencies are consulted by the card-issuers I would think.

-MarkM-

Some players have always had problems like this.

Many many years ago in my Digitalis D'ydii Cluster game software it was standard for each planet's starport's price-list to let you choose what kind of cargo to use as unit of account in which to price all other items on the pricelist.

Back then this was justified by the fact each and every one of the trillions upon trillions upon billions upon billions of planets each had their own local currency that was just some kind of alien collectable symbol or token to folk on other planets, left behind as tip to the starport upon leaving the planet with actual cargo that hopefully some other planet might find valuable.

Open Transactions follows much the same tradition: choose an asset to "buy" or "sell", choose another asset to serve as a "currency" in that transaction in the sense of being that asset of the pair of which you are offering some variable/negotiable quantity in return for some fixed quantity of the asset inserted in the "commodity" position in that transaction.

Merely changing which asset you choose to measure all other assets in does not really change the problem since it is merely perpetuating the same tunnel-vision mindset while crossing out the label of the asset the previous tunnel-vision used and writing your own favourite asset in its place in crayon.

-MarkM-

I don't know how many points of so called "gold" that Freeciv uses as currency those billions would come out to but I would expect players to be wondering how many military units or nuclear units they could field for a similar cost.

Presumably though the U.S. would have already figured that out and deliberately made the cost of compliance lower than the cost of fielding sufficient such units to discourage the U.S?

-MarkM-

Just try writing even a simple budget etc using bitcoins as a unit of account.

Advertising: one billion.

Oops, wait, one billion bitcoins at current conversion rates?

Conversion rates seem broken, surely no amount of value when converted to bitcoin as unit of account should come out to more than 21 million bitcoins?

Or do we go ahead and write our budget of billions of bitcoins anyway then try to pump it all through the only 21 million bitcoins "pipe"? What kind of velocity is needed for billions to flow through an aperture only 21 millions wide?

Bitcoins need to be asigned much much much higher value to work as units of account.

-MarkM-

Capability in fact/physics/mathematics need not convey right(s) in law.

e.g. Assault rifle might give you the capability to slaughter living fauna such as homo saps yet in some jurisdictions under some circumstances might not always be construed as conveying any "right" in law to do so.

(To the best of my knowledge I am not licensed to practice law in any jurisdictions of early 21st century on the planet known as Earth recognised in aforementioned planet and timeperiod's law as non-fictional non-game jurisdictions.)

-MarkM-

Generous but could be construed as concealing how weak a 10% solution is or some such interpretation. Possibly sending demo solution and concentrate could enable a more complete/accurate comparison/experience: not only the demo solution, not only the concentrate, but also just dow different the demo solution is from the concentrate?

(This is intended to be constructive suggestion, internetz might fail to correctly convey "tone" of post.)

-MarkM-

The Galactic Milieu.

It is a real {meta|}game with real game planets on which real game nations build real game cities, in which cities real game markets, real game banks and real game stock exchanges can be built have been built and are built.

With the constantly improving states of the art in gaming, naturally enough it no longer suffices to merely present three dimensional models of buildings and such where players can run around stealing automobiles, running over little old ladies, hookers and pimps with them, and stickup the bank tellers with weapons or use their highly attuned hearing enhancement and quest item stethoscope to open the vault.

No sir-ee! Nowadays we are working on Open Transactions software to truly bring your game cities' financial institutions to life!

Combined with the cutting edge game-currencies technology known as blockchain based cryptocurrencies that let you take your game loot home with you or from planet to planet, server to server, subgame or component game to subgame or component game, or even totally out of one game into a totally other game having in common only the ability to handle these cutting edge next-gen game-currencies, finally the numerically inclined can participate in multiplayer game economies of all kinds without being forced into wasting valuable hardware data-crunching power on superfluous window-dressing such as three dimensional immersive virtual environments and get right down to the nitty gritty of what numbers are actually on the ledgers of these in game institutions and how best to profit by participating in the in game financial nitty gritty that too many other games and metagames and virtual reality games fail to provide traders, wheeler-dealers, ministers of finance, comptrollers and other fascinating character-classes a truly satisfying experience of true immersion in.

The simulations possible using these next gen gaming tools will blow away all the dis-satisfaction afficionados of such character-classes feel in typical MUDflation-based game-economies, providing in fact verisimilitude that ultimately aims at nothing less than providing all the functionality a real world market, bank, or stock exchange and real world cryptocurrencies could potentially need want or require, thus allowing players to experience the future of markets, banking, and stock exchanges of the future today and, indeed, even participate in bringing that future about by playtesting industrial-strength solutions such a future so desperately needs!

This is no scam, this is real game devs and real game devcoins developing real game solutions for the real world of tomorrow today!

-MarkM-

(DIsclaimers: Post may contain promotional material. Real worlds of tomorrow in game might not precisely resemble real worlds of tomorrow out of game. Forward-looking statements pertain only to game institutions not necessarily to typical, average, or expected amounts of loot typical players necessarily will obtain therein. Open Transactions software does not yet support stickup-able virtual bank tellers. Stethoscope not included in Open Transactions module itself per se. Pseudonymous identities may not be who they may appear at first glance to be. Chaumian blinded cash may not be traceable by seers and mages using spells found outside optional extra psionics or magicks expansion packs. (Nor even necessarily by Rangers, Trackers, Pet Bloodhounds, Crystal Balls, Mirrors of Scrying or Arrows of Finding.)  See also Boilerplate DIsclaimers for All volumes 1 through 999 along with appendices I, III, IV, LV through MCCLV, and Disclaimer Expansion Packs of the Week (Origin Issue through Present Edition.)

Oh boy.

What if a miner copyrights his creative arrangement of transactions and hard-mined block-hash into a block clearly containing in no uncertain terms his copyright of his unique block that he just mined and, clearly labelled as his copyright creative work, released to other nodes for them to contemplate as a creative work of potential use to miners in general as a creative work from which to derive derivative works such as further blocks creatively extending the merkle tree one or miners are collaboratively constructing, a potentially viable branch of a formally correctly-formed potential longest chain?

Can he be sued for deriving his work from expressions of other people's creative "private key" works?

Worms within worms within cans - within cannots, too, even?

-MarkM-

I am not a lawyer. The impression I have been gathering is that there is no law directly forbidding the New York Stock Exchange, for example, from providing and enabling the buying and selling of registered securities using apples, oranges, bitcoins, or possibly even horses of a different colour (absent certain colours being controlled or restricted or protected species, the expectation that the person accepting them as payment might have it in mind to subject them to cruel and unusual treatment and such).

I haven't encountered anything yet that seems to bar stock exchanges from using barter, for example.

So the path forward seems actually quite straightforward really, laid out by the friendly people in the relevant regulator agencies and departments and what appear to be almost monopolistic vested interest groups of incumbents who possibly originally ganged up to attempt to fend off government regulation by asserting implying or claiming they could, collectively, regulate themselves thank very much.

(Similar to how various other "professional" professions have "professional associations".)

The path looks to be something along the lines of:

First, form a "firm" (company, corporation, limited liability get out of liability free card team) owned and operated by someone who has passed all the required examinations and such and staffed with "associated people" who are not required to have as many exams under their belts. (Save maybe the Chief Compliance Officer, who might have to be way up there with the designated Buck Stops Here fall-guy/chief/boss in terms of exams passed education acquired and such.)

That done, you now have a Broker-Dealer(ship), Only a grand or few a year to keep the boss and compliance officer licensed, only a few hundred for each of the smallfry such as sales staff who actually sell stuff.

Now you have a "firm" that could employ technicians to operate application servers such as [webservers that Americans might see pages of the sites on that mention securiities being available] and [trading platforms upon which investors to whom the firm and the salespeople who write the sales copy could possibly offer such securities as their licensing/qualifications and registrations permit them to deal and/or broker]. Oh of course some of that sales copy might need to be draughted as a prospectus, the terms and presentation in such prospectus approved by regulator authorities prior to its being deployed where potential purchasers might see it.

As far as I have read to this point, I have not seen any path that allows people such as application server technicians to form a "firm" with them as boss which employs as employees all those exams under their belts people. Such (exams under belts) people's professional associations seem to be instrumental in arranging the regulations in such a way that is they who necessarily must be in charge, justifying it by asserting that the Buck Stops Here person necessarily needs to be highly qualified to, uh... Stop Bucks, I guess? Meaning to take the fall if anyone employed in the firm "pulls a Nefario" or anything crazy like that...

Oh and this is just to create a broker-dealer(ship), one small step on the road toward creating an actual Stock Exchange, which typically involves lots of broker-dealer(ship)s all having "seats" so called while standing in mobs shouting and waving slips of paper and/or sitting in back rooms sipping brandy while the young pups the keeping down of whom might yet require the inventing of more required examinations or somesuch do the legwork / shouting in mobs / cornering of little old ladies to ethically sell them a secure retirement / etc.

-MarkM-

Actually you should check which such codes are 'FNORD!!!' words in your local area.

In the U,K, it might be "Ltd." that is a fnord, U.S. fnord-words might include "Inc."

Some such codes are like "TM" and the copyright symbol, or impersonating a police officer or wearing military emblems of the local military whilst not ever having been in that military or of the rank indicated by the emblem and suchlike totems/fetishes/symbols.

I took to using Corp for intergalactic organisations engaged in intergalactic commerce partly because around here (Halifax, Nova Scotia) I don't think that is one of the FNORD words, nonetheless when I introduced the term on these forums I threw in a whole "explanation" of what it meant in the context I was using it.

-MarkM-

Well look how well it worked for the utubes and file-download sites of the world.

New laws got passed that basically assume guilt until proven innocent or some such weirdness, in the sense that nowadays you might not anymore be able to just say you will remove any copyright-violating or intellectual-property violating or illegal material upon receipt of a court order? Instead now folks can just demand you remove it without even first having a judge ascertain they are within their rights to have it removed?

Or are the new "takedown notice" things actual real court orders?

Because allowing OTdemo Open Transactions server to demo the ability of anyone to issue any asset at any time seems likely to lead to some pornographic, hate-literature, racist, unregulated, illegal, intellectual property violating, copyright-infringing, rights of publicity infringing, etc etc etc assets, I am trying taking the position that as I am not a lawyer, and trolls making false accusations are extremely common and likely, it makes little sense for me to do a takedown that isn't court-ordered unless I am moved by some whim or mood or quirk of fate or act of deity or force majeure etc to do so.

I really am not educated enough in all the laws of this planet's various jurisdictions to determine which exactly among numerous pseudonymous identities are or are not permitted to play ruler of a nation or CEO of a corporation or interplanetary securities dealer or whatever their game is in which games where when and how.

However I do know that DeVCoins are intended to help raise money for software development so I don't really see yet any good reason why they should not be used to encourage playtesting of the Open Transactions platform by having them be used to reward players for playing, such as buying and selling various virtual articles with them. If people come up with interesting and potentially useful new free open source contracts for example are they not contributing thereby to free open source development?

Bitcoins though, hmm, are bitcoins really so very different that they ought not be permitted?

-MarkM-

Listening to hype about price/value is silly reagrdless of whether hypers are allowed to shout/spam or have to be more subtle.

I spoke of umpteen in progress constructions of atomic transactions precisely because I suspect the vast majority will never happen. So you start taking up everyone on every offer that is not according to your own personal valuation based on actual need a "within reason" or "within budget" offer. and keep doing so on autopilot 24/7 until by some miracle a complete fully valid atomic transaction within your budget does manage to get completed, whereupon you submit it immediately to every large mining pool you know of in hopes it will actually get mined before the other party backs out.

Reputation could be added of course, like aha, there is that famous "green address" that has never backed out of the construction process, I'll prioritise constructing a deal with them!

But listening to purported prices? Whatever happened to the value of a thing to you is its value to you?

I way to actually send messages might help, so you can try to get in actual touch with folk who haven't been seen to back out.

Maybe a newsgroup where you put a bitcoin address as title of a post and anyone who sees one of their addresses in such a title knows its a message aimed at them?

-MarkM-

Yet somehow I doubt defining robbing banks as a valid way of playing an Alternate Reality game would fly.

-MarkM-

How many EVE Online ponzi operators have been jailed for what they did in EVE Online?

-MarkM-

Well gosh yes, most of this companies and such stuff is childish and silly.

The "Great Game" is in being a Sovereign Nation!

Playing some puny "company" trading on the stock exchange of one city or even on many stock exchanges in many cities is small fry compared to running the (e.g. Freeciv) Nation or one of the Nations that builds those cities and builds Markets, Banks and Stock Markets in them!

March armies around! Make Alliance, Peace, Ceasefire, Armistice, or War treaties with other Nations!

Play with "real money" in the sense meant by expressions such as "a few billions here, a few billions there, pretty soon it adds up to real money"!

Win wars and influence history!

-MarkM-

Open Transactions charges one "usage credit" per API call.

No percentages, no caring whether the API call was a query as to what markets exist, a query as to what offers exist, the placing of an offer, the transfer of a million somethings to someone, just each API call you make costs one usage credit.

I have not actually turned on usage credits yet so currently they are not being charged. I want to make a script for easily assigning people usage credits before I turn it on. Then I will get to observe how many API calls the current GUI client makes in normal operation thus how many usage credits it tends to burn through how fast thus how much to sell usage credits for.

As to fees on withdrawals, or for that matter fees on entry to the system, I hope third parties will handle most of that, basically if you want to trade bitcoins you buy some digibitcoins from someone using some real bitcoins (or anything else they are willing to sell the tokens for), and when you want to cash out of the system back to actual bitcoins they buy your tokens from you with real bitcoins or whatever else you are willing to accept for your tokens.

I thus expect there will probably in practice be fees both on entry and on exit, just like when you bought e-gold or liberty reserve or pecunix etc from third parties or cashed back out by selling your e-gold or liberty reserve or pecunix etc to such third parties.

These third parties would be my customers I ought to know as in KYC, since they would be the people who actually "bail in" and "bail out" bitcoins, litecoins, etc etc to and from my cold wallets in my safety deposit boxes or whatever, much like the third parties for e-gold were the ones who actually shipped real gold to vaults and had real gold shipped out to them from the vaults.

Hopefully the vaults will before long never need to be touched, due to their containing enough assets to back enough tokens to provide a fat enough pipe to handle the volume of trade, (The more velocity the less fat the pipes needed presumably.)

-MarkM-

The investment club sounds like it might work for Moderately Multiplayer online games, though creating networks of such entities that between them accomodate many more people than the 100 maximum any one of them needs to restrict itself to could be tricky.

The matter of having passive members is often built into even to simple PHP-using-MySQL web based games, in the automatic removal of idle players. Fail to play for some number of days and poof, you are no longer a player thus if the game is to be construed as an investment club you are no longer a member of the club.

Take a simple often-cloned game idea such as "O-Game clones" such as 2Moons, XNova, Xnova Redesigned and suchlike.

Each player chooses whether to "invest" in power plants, metal mines, crystal mines, deuterium sythesisers, defenses, attack fleets, cargo fleets and so on. They are not even forced to all "invest" in a co-ordinated way, they can all individually choose different "investments"...

-MarkM-

I have written this before many months ago but I'll try again now.

The only entities that need to know I own a particular share are those entities that are capable of shipping me my share of the buildings or livestock or inventory or whatever that it is a share of, or of shipping me dividends.

To anyone else it is business intelligence they probably should not have and that maybe I would prefer they not have.

So when ownership of a share of Company X changes hands the only folk who need to know are the two parties whose hands it changes between, Company X itself, and the collection agencies / thugs / asset-seizers local to Company X who will be liquidating Company X in the case it becomes insolvent such as by failing to pay any promises to pay it makes such as promising to pay divdends/interest on a specific schedule.

No one else needs to know nor maybe should be caused to know.

Certainly not every bitcoin blockchain copy all over the known universe.

So there is not a global consensus to hammer out, there is merely the problem of having both parties to the change of hands, plus Company X itself, plus gang of repossession thugs aka liquidators who are contracted to reduce Company X to its component assets and distribute them to shareholders in the event of insolvency all agree on the order in which the change of hands took place as compared to any other changes of hands of shares of Company X. Maybe contract some extra gangs of thugs aka liquidators to break the legs of or confiscate the assets of the first such gang in the event the first such gang does not perform as contracted, and maybe a backup gang in case those fail too. Depends how much you want to pay for gangs of thugs to "insure" you get your share of what Company X has...

-MarkM-

Not sure if you are saying the cost of having everyone hard fork every week is not a problem, we should hard fork often to keep up with fads in whether to use decimals at all or whether it is more fun to all be millionares or whatever?

Or that you agree a thousand times over thus it is very boring that the same obvious objection to an pathetically stupid Frequently Proposed Idiocy has to come up a thousand times due to Frequently Proposed Idiocies being so very frequently proposed...

-MarkM-